The LED SAE J583 Fog Pod & Fog Light Review

Thanks. I used that one but was having trouble seeing the cutoff. Likely I chose a bad (kind of reflective) wall.

 

Cut the distance and drop in half, instead of 25’ and 4” drop, use 12.5’ and 2” drop. It isn’t quite as precise as the longer method, but angles are the same. Shorter distance helps with making the cut off easier to define.

 

Just wanted to throw in a post that I recently decided to purchase the DD SS3 Pro Selective Yellow SAE Fogs for my Tacoma (to replace factory LED projector fogs) and am super happy with the results so far. Have not had the opportunity to test in fog/snow yet, but I encounter it at lot while working out of town later in the year. The amount of light coming from these is outstanding. I see some of the above recent comments saying other models may be better as fogs, sure, but I can guarantee that you will not be disappointed with these.

@crashnburn80 thank-you for all your time and efforts in building this thread! I had originally planned to get the Morimotos for either my wife’s 4runner or my Tacoma, but this thread was very informative! Really appreciate you being so descriptive and deliberate in your methods. This is a critical factor in determining accuracy and results/recordings being replicable.

 

Has there been any talk on the Amber offroadtowns? I got the white a year ago and was very happy with them.

 

Love my DD SS3’s. Need to adjust them a bit more.

 

you dont have a master with this data for all the lights you have tested do you? Ultimate showdown chart?

 

When I bought my truck new I upgraded to the OEM LED fog/ditch lights in white and was never impressed. I just upgraded to the DD Elites in Amber. I was a bit sceptical as to how much of an improvement they would be, what a difference in light output and beam spread, its fantastic. Their SAE compliant, a snap to install, plug and play and I followed the alignment videos post install. Could not be happier.

 

Lux is not the most important data set. It's a great bragging number that doesn't mean much in the real world. Candella is the better measure.

 

Lux is ok as long as defined with exact measurement distance. Just need to convert, extra work for reviewer. Candela is correct unit to be used for photometric measurement. What matters the more is "what point of the beam was measured" selecting random singular e-max is insufficiently useless practice. For basic fog evaluation, 1. gradient value 2. 15L/R 3D points measurement those two are essentials

 

draw to output is a good comparative starting point. Best metric no, but no point looking at something that is expensive, low output, and high draw. DD SS3 aren't even on this chart and they are highly rated and a fan favorite here.
I have morimoto ambers, that was my budget at the time. Just curious the overall picture since he already did the work maybe had the chart already built.

 

100% agree. Unfortunately, many people do just that. Worse yet, they publish / advertise / brag about "theoretical" lux. After all, why waste the time and effort to actually measure something - especially when that number is significantly lower.

 

Hello Folks,

I've read a fair bit of this thread and others regarding color of fog lighting and its value in inclement weather. My bigger concern though is regarding deer and wonder if anyone has a clear impression as to white or amber/yellow fog lighting is better for seeing them? I live in a semi rural area and at least at one time this county in SE Michigan had the highest incidence of car/deer collisions in the state, and it's a BIG state!
Thanks much for any thoughts or observations you'd be willing to share!

 

Driving slower is the best way to see them. I don’t think color temp is going to make much difference.

 

Oh I do that, much to the annoyance of those who travel the same roads. I’ve lived in the same place for 20 years and know the problem spots.

 

I think any color temp is fine. I’m still surprised at how wide the beam is on the SS3 Pros I have (selective yellow with clear lenses) and think that driving with the low beams and the fogs on, at slower speeds will be a great improvement.

 

The most important thing for sight is intensity. Color temp/spectrum is less important and actually can be split (in terms of sensitivity) in the dark by the eye.

I used to have a pretty solid thread with discussion on this bookmarked, from candlepowerforums, but they had a site crash a while back, and between that and restructuring some of the forum, it seems to have been lost, otherwise I'd point you to it.

I can give you some anec-data. I've done a lot of extended night driving in a whole host of conditions and terrains. Selective yellow becomes quite "comfy" to drive with. To the point I paid for dozens (literally) of tickets because I ran various yellow/selective yellow bulbs, bulb tinting envelopes, and selective yellow tinted lenses on my old 4runner for years. I now have a '22 trd offroad with the LED headlights, and have added DD SS5's with their selective yellow lenses as my driving lights.

Selective yellow lamps tend to stand out because increasingly every car on the road has bright blue-white headlights, whether its older vehicles with HIDs, factory LED lamps or people choosing to run some flavor of led retrofit bulb. They're missing out.

Selective yellow, as a primary forward illumination color is super comfortable to drive with. On a typical night, the only time you'll be reminded that your lamps are "yellow" is when you illuminate a reflective street sign with a blue face, or pull up behind a blue vehicle. With red and green wavelength light, everything else looks completely "normal" in comparison to driving with a normal halogen lamp. Every normal shade you'd see is still perfectly visible. But your eyes don't become nearly as fatigued, especially in inclement weather. You don't get nearly as much backscatter or glare back/reflective light from reflective surfaces, so you aren't getting these splashes of high intensity light thrown back in your face as frequently.

Probably one of the few things the French got right (and stupidly ceded when joining the EU).

But fog lamps, when properly aimed, aren't really that useful for spotting deer. By design they should be casting a very wide, low and most importantly -SHORT- distance beam pattern, illuminating directly in front and to the immediate sides of your vision for low speed driving in poor weather. A good fog lamp also has a fairly hard cut off at the top of its horizontal spread, meaning they shoudln't really be able to help spot deer at a distance. If your properly aimed fogs show you a deer, you're probably too close to it to react.

A wide beam driving lamp will be more useful for actually spotting deer along the road. But they should not be used with lowbeams, or as a replacement for fog lamps. Now, selective yellow is not a legal color for driving lights/auxiliary high beams in any state whose lighting codes I've had a chance to look at, but DD pods can be purchased with a selective yellow lens, which means the emitters they come with are a 4000k white, instead of a 5500-6000k white, as any lamps sold originally with a clear lens come equipped with. But you can then swap in a clear lens in place of the selective yellow lens, and have a fully legal 4000k white light, with an approximately 10% boost in output from the selective yellow lamps rating. Or you can, like me, keep the selective yellow lens and risk a ticket when questioned.

 

Thanks much for your thoughtful and informative reply Toy_Runner!
I probably won't do a dedicated driving light for a variety of reasons, but the fog lights, properly aimed, will serve me well for the daily drive I'm most concerned about where the highest speed limit is 40mph and I'm often going slower due to the deer concentration along the river the road parallels and the streams I go over. They may not be ideal, but I'm sure they will help.
I appreciate the time you took to write all of this and it's too bad your thread on the candlepower forum was apparently lost!
Thanks Again!

 

Similar issue in rural BC. Town has a resident population of just over 300 deer, GPS collars showed they have a range of <500m. We have an extra surcharge on our auto insurance because of the deer incidents in our area.

I went with DD SSc3 Pro select yellow fogs because the Pros have a less defined upper cutoff to spot deer lurking road side and on the FSRs I drive for work.

 

my SS3 pro are great for seeing the deer just off the shoulder. the ones that may spook and jump directly in front of you. Had one start to come out yesterday and the superior lateral throw from the fogs lit it up before I could get close enough for danger.
My dirt roads are 10-25mph depending on the particular section so they are 100% useful. they light up the road in front for ruts/debris, but the ditch/shoulder are where they shine (pun intended)

 

Forgive me if it's already been mentioned but there's a lot of info in the thread and I'm not able to go through it all for what I'm curious about. Are the TRD Pro Rigid fogs wider than the non-Pro LED (

$134 Toyota Genuine Parts - Led Foglight Chrome (PT413-42190)

PT413-42190) fogs or are they narrower/mostly the same? I swear I read somewhere a few years back that the TRD Pro fogs are brighter but not as wide as the non-Pro LEDs but I don't remember if that was this thread, somewhere else, or my imagination.